


Notching

by explosionshark



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 01:10:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1285615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosionshark/pseuds/explosionshark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has been looking for the light since Salt Lake, it’s only a matter of time. She knows what it will mean when she finds them. She isn’t afraid.</p>
<p>She has debts to pay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Notching

**Author's Note:**

> 300 word drabble, prompt taken from a random word generator. Feedback appreciated.

Fourteen bars. Three slashes.

She keeps score on her left arm, starting just beneath the crook of her elbow, stopping a few inches above her wrist.

The first three she did the night before she left Jackson, unable to sleep after the funeral, burning kerosene til dawn for the necessary soot, hiding the marks from Tommy under the sleeves of her coat when she left the next morning. The first line is a little uneven - shaky hands. She hadn't known what she was in for, not really, didn't know what it would cost her. By the third line, her trembling grip had been transformed into a hand just slightly too heavy, pressing the thickest of the marks into her skin. Unintentional, or maybe just subconscious, but fitting.

Riley. Tess. Joel.

The fourth bar is Marlene.

She found the dogtags in the parking garage on her way into the hospital. It was the truth she sought, the reality she dreaded. She scratched her apology into her arm with a jagged sliver of glass there on the pavement, so she wouldn't lose track. Two nights later, she filled in the scar with a needle and soot, added thirteen others. Men and women whose names she would never know: a scattered handful of abandoned dogtags, frantically scrawled accounts of a madman’s rampage, and the lamentably bare memorial she carried on her skin the only evidence that they had ever lived or died.

Each night, Ellie runs her fingertips along the raised skin inside her arm and acknowledges the 17 debts she owes. Each morning, she does the same. She has been looking for the light since Salt Lake, it’s only a matter of time. She knows what it will mean when she finds them. She isn't afraid.

She has debts to pay.


End file.
